ABSTRACTIn this paper, I address the question of what we are really after when we seek Smithian mutual sympathy; I also show how the answer I propose can be used to illuminate a crucial feature of Smith's moral philosophy. The first section develops a Smithian response to egoistic interpretations of the desire for mutual sympathy. The second section identifies a number of different self- and other-relevant ways in which one could desire mutual sympathy. Some of these different ways of desiring (...) mutual sympathy comprise a spectrum of degrees of self-centredness; others comprise a spectrum of degrees of other-centredness. The third section shows that the spectra of ways of desiring mutual sympathy can be used to explain the kind of sincere, motivating attachment to morality characteristic of fully developed Smithian moral agents. (shrink)

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real (...) task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)

Part of the value of stories is moral, in that understanding them, and the characters within them, is one way in which we seek to make moral sense of life. Arguably, it has become quite common to use stories in order to make moral sense of business life. Case method is the standard teaching method in top business schools, and so-called “war stories” are customary for on-the-job training. Shakespeare is a trendy purveyor of leadership education. Several books and articles have (...) been written on the intersection between literature and business and/or business ethics. Still, it is one thing to claim that literature can contribute to our understanding of business conduct, but yet another to claim that literature can contribute to␣the related goal of improving moral conduct in business. Supporters of the claims tend to presume they go together, while skeptics and detractors often discard them as a package. These claims warrant further investigation if they are to be perceived by business scholarship and practice as worthy of serious attention, not just a quaint search for lowbrow moral fables or a vain pursuit of highbrow poetry. One instrumental function of literature is to imitate life, thereby expanding our vision beyond our parochial interests; to see literature merely as a didactic instrument to serve business interests misses the point that literature should expand understanding, our sense of what in addition to business is interesting and valuable. (shrink)

Smith thinks it possible to sympathize with certain non-sentient beings, such as the human dead. Consequently, some commentators argue that Smith’s theory supports ecocentrism. I reject that Smith’s theory has this implication. Sympathizers in Smith’s theory can imagine themselves as non-sentient beings, but they will lack the relevant evaluative concerns. The situation of a non-sentient being, as that being confronts the situation, remains inaccessible to the sympathizer. I will also address the limits of sympathetic concern within Smith’s theory,; highlight a (...) related problem about how our efforts to sympathize with others should be constrained,; and suggest a solution. (shrink)

What kind of persons could engage in political torture? Not only the morally impaired who lack empathy or compassion, or even the merely obedient, but also the righteous who struggle with conscience, and the realists who set morality aside.

This paper attempts to relax the tension between Adam Smith's claim that sympathy involves an evaluative act of imaginative projection and his claim that sympathy involves a non-evaluative act of imaginative identification. The first section locates the tension specifically in the two different ways Smith depicts the stance adopted by the sympathizer. The second section argues that we can relax this tension by finding an important role for a non-evaluative stance in Smith's normative account of moral evaluation. This solution protects (...) the continuity in Smith's account of sympathy (cf. Griswold 1999: 99–103). Because of the particular way in which it renders intelligible the relationship between the evaluative and non-evaluative stances, this solution also emphasizes the importance that respect for the agent's conscience has in Smith's conception of an ideal moral judge (cf. Darwall 2004; 2006). The third section investigates a possible systematic basis for Smith's normative commitment to respectful moral judgment. (shrink)